Winner of the Art Quench Gallery 2012 Abstract Competition; Halaburda

titled; ” Tombant de Gili “

Our Juror Monica Hicks. I am choosing Halaburda’s first work. It speaks to urban sprawl. The abstraction of survival, cityscapes as seen from above. I like that it’s acrylic but has the feeling of the uncontrollable watercolor. The layers of paint, the application of the washed, translucency, and vividness reminds me of Mark Bradford multimedia works.

Halaburba’s work is both beautiful, abstract, political, and has both visual and intellectual depth.

More on Halaburda…

I am born in 1972 in Meaux in France. I studied Graphic Design in Paris and graduated in 1996 with an honors degree. I have developed his own style of abstract painting since then, and currently live near Aix-en-Provence in South of France. My paintings inhabit the ground between figuration and abstraction. They are also in a constant state of flux and suggest different things to different people. I regard them as a springboard for the imagination. Lines, forms and tasks of painting suggest things to me that I would never have come up with by conscious design alone. I begin by making random marks on the canvas with a paper pencil or a brush, without any preconceived ideas at all of what the finished work is going to look like. Accident and chance are used to provide the starting point for each artwork. The things I choose to develop, the painted area I leave, the elements I paint over, the colours I use – all these things are inevitably a product of my own environment, experience and memories. The painting is complete when there is nothing more I feel the need to change. The titles of the paintings are intended to hint at an element of what the work suggests to me when it is finished, but should not be taken as a clue to ‘meaning’. I try to articulate meaning and content with my own language, my own words.